Donate
Connect With Us

Research — Policy Center

Constructing the Future: Strategies to Help Massachusetts Meet Its Clean Energy and Housing Goals

By , and

Download the Report

Key Takeaways

  • Construction output has declined in recent years. Prompt action to stimulate demand is necessary to sustain this critical workforce and preserve long-term industry capacity.
  • Assuming continued economic growth, scaling up the training system to meet workforce needs for housing and clean energy should be an attainable goal.
  • Recent progress in racial, ethnic, and gender diversity presents an opportunity to expand the industry’s future labor pool.
  • Reducing construction costs while maintaining competitive, family-sustaining wages will require meaningful gains in productivity.

June 17, 2025

Executive Summary

The MassINC Policy Center (MPC) partnered with BW Research to produce this analysis prior to recent dramatic shifts in climate and economic policy at the federal level. We began with a simple hypothesis: To achieve the state’s ambitious housing and clean energy goals over the next decade, Massachusetts would need to grow the skilled building trades workforce, and this would require significantly more training capacity. Changing policy and economic conditions make it much harder to boost housing production levels and accelerate the transition to clean energy in the near-term. Training more workers for construction jobs that will not exist for some time is not only irresponsible, but also highly infeasible, given the industry’s reliance on apprenticeship and on-the-job training.

However, this does not mean that the construction workforce and training system is no longer a critical issue for state leaders. Given the uncertainty that Massachusetts now faces, making as much incremental progress as possible on housing and clean energy while positioning the commonwealth for more rapid gains in the future calls for even greater attention to the productivity of workers in the building trades. In addition to informing long-term efforts, our research can help direct near- and medium-term interventions to sustain this essential workforce and boost its skill levels. This executive summary condenses our analysis into four high-level takeaways, key findings, and policy recommendations.

Four High-Level Takeaways

The full report explores labor supply and demand in the Massachusetts construction market, estimates the number of additional workers required to meet the state’s 2030 clean energy and 2035 housing production targets, quantifies the capacity of our skilled building trades training system, and offers policy recommendations. Folding this analysis together, four high-level takeaways emerge:

  1. Aggregate construction output has been falling for several years. Acting swiftly to boost demand will help preserve this essential workforce and maintain its productive capacity for the long-term.

    Leaders in Massachusetts must grapple with the reality that construction output is lagging and likely to decline further over the near-term. This means skilled workers will be sidelined and not contributing at their full productive capacity while Massachusetts falls behind on its housing and clean energy goals. Policymakers can respond by doing more to unlock growth and preserve jobs by acting quickly on proposed regulatory changes and deploying limited state subsidy dollars in a manner that facilitates as much construction as possible in the near-term.
  2. Even under strong assumptions for sustained economic growth, it should be relatively achievable to expand the training system to prepare the additional workers required to meet the state’s housing and clean energy goals.

    The greater challenge will likely be finding enough young people interested in entering these professions despite wage growth not keeping up with other industries. Economic modeling and forecasting suggests at most the skilled building trades workforce would need to grow by around 20 percent from current levels to meet the 2030 clean energy and 2035 housing production targets. The workforce has expanded at this rate to meet increasing demand over the past decade. However, much of this growth occurred in commercial construction, where union involvement helps assure good wages and working conditions. With retirements increasing and fewer young people entering the Massachusetts workforce in the future, the industry will be under increasing pressure to offer competitive pay to attract new entrants.
  3. Recent gains in racial, ethnic, and gender diversity should give the industry openings to tap into a greater supply of potential workers in the future.

    Efforts to bring more women and people of color into the skilled building trades had considerable success over the past decade. Increasing diversity should make the field more welcoming to groups that had previously been highly underrepresented. However, the jobs is not done. There is more work to do to increase diversity, and many impactful DEI programs are now under threat.
  4. Lowering construction costs while ensuring that the skilled building trades continue to offer competitive family sustaining wages in our high-cost state will require productivity gains.

    Limited data make it difficult to accurately measure construction industry labor productivity, but the available evidence points to stagnant or declining productivity levels in Massachusetts. State agencies, training providers, labor, and industry leaders must work together to boost productivity levels over the long-term.

Summary of Key Findings

The Skilled Building Trades Labor Market

A strong grasp of the following past patterns can help leaders consider their response to the current downturn and lay the groundwork for a workforce that will emerge prepared to meet the state’s housing and clean energy goals:

  • The construction industry started to contract in 2021,
    and total output is now roughly 10 percent lower than
    2019 levels.
  • At the height of the Great Recession, roughly 20 percent of Massachusetts residents in the skilled building trades were unemployed. While the workforce has recovered, growth has varied significantly by occupation. Fueled by the emergence of the clean energy sector, the electrician workforce has seen the largest increase. The number of electricians employed in Massachusetts in 2023 was nearly 50 percent higher than in 2005. The plumbing workforce has also experienced very strong growth (+44 percent) over the past two decades, driven by plumbing-intensive lab projects. In contrast, the total number of carpenters in Massachusetts is down 21 percent compared to 2005, and the number of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) workers only rose 10 percent—consistent with a roughly 25 decline in residential construction levels over the past two decades (Figure ES-1).
  • The state’s skilled building trades workforce has become far more diverse. In 2010, residents of color made up just 10 percent of workers in these occupations. By 2023, they accounted for nearly one-quarter of those employed in the skilled building trades. Progress toward gender parity has been even faster, but from a very low base. Women went from 1.5 percent of this workforce in 2010 to 4 percent in 2023. Workers in the skilled building trades are notably less likely to be foreign-born than construction laborers and even the overall Massachusetts workforce (16 percent of skilled building workers are foreign-born, compared with 22 percent of all workers).
  • Nearly one-third of workers in the skilled building trades are over age 50, a 6-percentage-point increase from 2010. While this is similar to the proportion of employed residents over age 50 in Massachusetts, it will be more problematic for construction because the physical nature of these jobs leads to earlier retirement and the industry relies heavily on experienced workers to apprentice the next generation.
  • Adjusting for inflation, wages for most workers in the skilled building trades have remained relatively flat. Between 2010 and 2023, the median hourly wage (accounting for inflation) for electricians and HVAC workers increased by 4 percent and 2 percent, respectively—well below the 8 percent pace for all payroll workers in Massachusetts. Wages for carpenters fell by 3 percent. Plumbers were the only skilled building trade that saw real wages grow at an above-average pace (+18 percent).
  • Falling productivity could help explain slow wage growth. Real output per construction worker did not rise at all throughout the 2010s in Massachusetts, and since 2020 it has declined by 17 percent. A shortage of skilled workers may help explain the more recent productivity challenges in the sector.

Meeting the State’s Housing and Clean Energy Goals

Delivering on the state’s housing and clean energy goals in tandem will be difficult. Decision-makers must know how many construction workers in various trades will be required to accomplish this task, and how these figures compare to changing levels in aggregate demand for construction workers in these occupations. Figure ES-2 provides these numbers. Summarized in context:

  • Meeting the goal of building 220,000 new housing units by 2035 would require a 40 percent boost in annual production over recent levels. Constructing this additional housing will require approximately 3,152 full-time equivalent workers each year over the next decade, with the the effort spread relatively evenly across the occupations.
  • Meeting the state’s 2030 greenhouse gas emission reduction targets would require 5,888 workers employed annually in the skilled building trades through 2030, with electricians accounting for over 75 percent of this total.
  • Increasing housing production and meeting the state’s 2030 climate goals simultaneously would require a total of 9,040 full-time equivalent workers in the skilled building trades. The trajectory of the economy will heavily influence whether additional
    workers in the skilled building trades will need to be trained to meet aggregate demand for workers in these occupations.

The Skilled Building Trades Training Landscape

As leaders guide the Massachusetts economy through uncertain times and position it to emerge with greater productive capacity, it is critical to understand the current capacity of the skilled building trades training landscape and barriers that providers may face if called upon to increase throughput. Data analysis and a survey of training providers yields several important insights:

  • Skilled building trade workers receive training in Massachusetts through three primary providers: Career and technical education high schools (CTE schools, also known as vocational schools), community colleges, and union-sponsored apprenticeship programs. Combined, these three pathways train about 1,000 carpenters and electricians each year, along with 675 HVAC mechanics and installers. However, these aggregate estimates significantly overinflate the number of new workers entering these professions because many receive training from more than one provider before fully entering the workforce.
  • In a steady economy, the Massachusetts construction workforce needs around 700 new carpenters and electricians, as well as 500 new HVAC mechanics and installers, to keep up with retirements and those who exit these professions prematurely (either to change careers or to move out-of-state). Under this steady state scenario, adding the additional workers to meet housing and clean energy goals over a five-year period would mean boosting training capacity to bring an additional 1,000 electricians, 220 carpenters, and 250 HVAC mechanics and installers into the
    workforce each year. The capacity of the electrical training system is well below this level currently, and training for carpenters and HVAC technicians is likely insufficient as well. This is because the number of trainees actually employed in Massachusetts is likely closer to 50 percent of the total due to overlapping enrollment, career changes, and out-of-state
    migration (Figure ES-3).
  • If Massachusetts needs to boost training capacity, shortages of physical space and qualified instructors are the two most commonly cited barriers that programs will face. Nearly half (45 percent) of surveyed training providers with carpentry programs or HVAC programs, as well as two in five (39 percent) electrical
    training providers, report that they do not have enough physical space to grow. Around one-third see hiring qualified instructors as a significant barrier. This problem is especially acute for high schools. Over half of comprehensive high schools with Chapter 74 programs (55 percent) and three-quarters of CTE schools (75 percent) report difficulty hiring and retaining instructors. Lack of apprenticeships is a concern for a number of HVAC programs (30 percent).
  • Few programs have difficulty recruiting students, but some training providers report a lack of employer demand for additional graduates. However, this concern is relatively limited (between 15 and 22 percent of programs note this barrier varying by trade).
  • One-third of programs have plans to expand, with slightly higher rates for HVAC technicians (41 percent) and electricians (37 percent). On the other hand, 20 percent of programs for electricians expect enrollment to decline, followed by 13 percent for carpentry and 9 percent for HVAC.

Recommendations

The state’s skilled building trades workforce is essential to meeting housing and clean energy goals, as well as to supporting healthy economic growth more broadly. These workers build vital public facilities and public infrastructure, as well as factories and other commercial facilities. The skilled building trades also offer good middle-class jobs, which are pathways to upward mobility and family financial security. Given the import, these seven ideas for creative policymaking will further efforts to nurture and sustain a strong and productive skilled building trades workforce in Massachusetts:

  1. Improve data collection. Traditional sources of labor market information provide a poor representation of the construction workforce. Massachusetts can close these information gaps by integrating information from databases maintained by licensing boards with the education-to-career data systems managed by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
  2. Increase the utilization of registered apprenticeship. Providing a sufficient number of apprenticeship opportunities is always challenging, but much more so in a downturn. Threats to DEI initiatives could also make it more difficult for pre-apprenticeship programs to perform their pivotal role creating pathways into these professions for underrepresented groups. State leaders should be on the alert and ready to assist these programs. Massachusetts can also leverage free community college
    to help unions and employers build more apprenticeship training programs that provide classroom instruction at no cost to students. The state can also publish data on the number of apprentices working for contractors participating in public projects and their retention rates. This information will help those procuring public projects determine whether firms are fully meeting the definition of the lowest “responsible” bidder under state procurement law.
  3. Ensure compliance with prevailing wage laws. Massachusetts can follow the lead of other states and add occupation and hours worked to unemployment insurance filings. This information would aid efforts to enforce prevailing wage laws and reduce self-reporting compliance costs for responsible employers.
  4. Carefully monitor teaching vacancies and devise effective strategies to fill positions with high-quality instructors. Survey results show that both CTE high schools and community colleges are having difficulty attracting and retaining instructors. Massachusetts must capture accurate data on job vacancies and experiment with additional compensation and other strategies to
    help training providers recruit and retain high-quality instructors.
  5. Align capital investment in high schools and community colleges with strategic efforts to increase training capacity and yield. Adding space for career and technical education programs at comprehensive high schools can quickly and cost-effectively provide more opportunities for both youth and adults students to receive training in the skilled building trades. Funding from Governor Healey’s BRIGHT Act for state-of-the-art community college training facilities could also help fill regional gaps in the skilled building trades training system.
  6. Aggressively implement the recommendations of the Unlocking Housing Production Commission. With the economic barriers to housing production rising, there is even greater urgency to move expediently on the more than 50 proposals offered by the governor’s commission. The Healey-Driscoll administration must adopt regulatory changes and build support for high-impact policies that will require statutory change before the close of the
    2025-2026 legislative session.
  7. Stimulate demand for construction labor with strategic state investment. Massachusetts can insulate its construction workforce with countercyclical investments that meet critical needs. This could be accomplished by temporarily shifting housing investment toward shallow subsidy programs that produce more units of housing for each dollar of state support. The state could also identify new dedicated revenue sources to accelerate vital public construction projects, such as school building and commuter rail transformation.
  8. Co-invest in manufactured housing. Massachusetts can accelerate the growth of a manufactured housing industry that increases home energy efficiency and improves construction labor productivity and working conditions by providing state land for factories, offering loan guarantees or direct equity investments, and granting advantages in public procurement.

Topic

Economic Development